Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Twins reclaimed sole possession of first place of the AL
Central by jumping all over Chicago starter Freddy Garcia and knocking him out
prematurely en route to a 12-6 victory. While it may seem like a simple story
of the Twins lineup seeing-ball-hitting-ball, there was much more preparation
that presumably went into the team’s plan of attack against Garcia.

Garcia relies on a combination of speed changes and avoiding
the middle part of the strike zone in order to navigate through a major league
lineup with his substandard velocity (in fact, he has the 5th slowest fastball on average in the AL). For
the most part, Garcia chooses to stay away from the hitter’s swing by throwing
the ball off the plate and enticing opponents into get themselves out. To
left-handed opponents, Garcia dotted the outer-half of the plate 64% of the
time, usually using his fastball that has more tail than the Playboy mansion.
Righties have receive similar treatment, seeing pitches on the outer-half 57%
of the time, but to his same-sided opponents, Garcia regularly deployed his
changeup in hopes of getting those hitters to turn over on the pitch.

This approach, combined with 5.33 runs of support per game,
aided in elevating the retread to a 10-4 record in spite of a bloated 4.62 xFIP
on the season.

Prior to last night’s game, I tweeted that while
Garcia loved to work away, the Twins had two very good hitters in Joe Mauer and
Orlando Hudson that handled pitches on the outer-half extremely well. According
to Inside Edge’s rankings through the well-hit average, Mauer’s .248 against
pitches away was far and away the best in baseball while Hudson’s .169 well-hit
average was the fourth best in the majors. This pair would work quickly to get
the Twins on the board as Garcia played right into their strengths.

In the first inning, Garcia went to work on the left-handed
hitting Hudson, hitting the outer-half of the plate with a mixture of pitches
before hanging a curve middle-away that Hudson promptly hooked into the right
field corner for a double. Mauer, following Hudson, took a changeup away for a
ball before rifling the next pitch, a similarly located change, into the
left-center field gap for back-to-back doubles to score Hudson for the first
run of the game.

What I had failed to mention (or rather ran out of room in
the strict 140-character limitations set by Twitter) was that the Twins had an
entire stable of hitters that are very adept at covering the entire strike zone
with authority. While not technically qualified among baseball’s leaders due to
their lower total of plate appearances, both Jim Thome (.159 well-hit average)
and J.J. Hardy (.115) were also much better than the league’s average (.095) at
hitting pitches on the outer-half of the strike zone.

With the Twins holding on to their 1-0 lead in the second,
Garcia tried to sneak a fastball away to Jim Thome who went with the pitch and
drove it into the left field stands for his 15th home run of the
year. After retiring Danny Valencia on a groundball, Garcia worked Hardy to a
2-2 count and flipped him a slider that the right-handed Hardy yanked into the
left field bleachers as well.

This foursome punished Garcia’s approach thoroughly and
chased him from the ballgame in the third inning with a secure 5-0 lead. Jumping
out to a one-nothing lead in the three game series bodes well for the Twins yet
Wednesday’s opposition, John Danks, isn’t nearly as transparent as his rotation
counterpart is. The left-hander, who has significantly better velocity than
Garcia, typically throws a fastball on the first pitch and early in the count
but is quick to abandon the hard stuff in favor of his changeup (particularly
with two strikes), which gets plenty of hitters to chase. Look for the Twins to
attempt to get at him early in the count when he is still throwing fastballs.

About OtB

"Parker Hageman is the Michael Cuddyer of Twins bloggers -- not the flashiest guy out there, but a solid everyday player. Hageman produces spot-on analysis ... relying on in-depth stats and lots of charts. He takes a sober, performance-based view of players, letting others fall for a player's heart or his leadership skills in the clubhouse. Hageman is one of the four pillars holding up the Star Tribune's TwinsCentric blog."